


Even Mollusks Have Weddings

by Argyle



Category: Alice (2009)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-20
Updated: 2012-12-20
Packaged: 2017-11-21 19:42:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/601384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Argyle/pseuds/Argyle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's very easy to take <i>more</i> than nothing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Even Mollusks Have Weddings

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tsukara](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tsukara/gifts).



The _Hatter_ thing? It's inherited. A title that's been attached to, oh, twenty, thirty incarnations since the Beginning. Maybe more. Not exactly an honorific, and not the sort of dubious distinction a mother bestows upon her child at birth, but certainly something of a foregone conclusion when the child in question is more at home under a fedora brim than a rabbit is in a bit of bramble. All it takes to properly kick off is for the old Hatter to step down -- sometimes with grace, but usually as a result of some ghastly malady of certain cranial humors -- so a new one can don the fabled topper and have a go.

No Hatter is quite the same as another. They are, as is said, a fairly motley brethren.

That mad fellow from Alice's kids' story was Hatter's granduncle. Hatter never envied him the fame, but nor did he truly appreciate what it was like to inhabit a world turned topsy-turvy by a girl in a blue frock. After all, Granduncle H's ravings were not to be paid an awful lot of mind, and anyway it had all happened so very _long_ ago.

And then Hatter met her: Alice of now, Alice of legend, simply _Alice_.

*

"Have you met many daffodils?" Alice asks. They're both drifting, just shy of sleep, still idly entwined: Alice's arm over Hatter's chest, and Hatter's round Alice's back, his hand resting neatly on the curve of her hip. Her breath lures a line of goose pimples across his skin.

Hatter puffs out a laugh. "By the bouquet. Haven't you?"

"No." And then: "What about unicorns?"

"Flocks of them."

"Aren't unicorns solitary by nature? And also: logically, wouldn't they travel by herd?"

"Yes, well. Logic's an odd one. But seeing as _you're_ the expert on unicorns, oughtn't I ask-- Ow! What on earth was _that_ for?"

Alice's face is tucked against Hatter's shoulder, and he can feel more than see her smile shift into a grin. The tender flesh where she'd nipped him still smarts a bit, but not enough to dim the shiver of pleasure it summoned. He draws her up for a kiss. After, in the half-light, he can see that she's still grinning. There's a glint in her eye: too knowing, too close, and Hatter finds he's lost the ability to breathe.

Oh, a little lightheadedness never hurt anyone. Hatter manages to speak, and it's very nearly what he means. "I'll let you in on a secret. D'you promise not to tell?"

"Yes," says Alice, somberly.

"You've not lived until you've heard a gryphon sing."

"Really? I bet it's lovely."

"Quite the opposite," Hatter murmurs, pulling the blanket over both of them. "But the entertainment value is frankly _enormous_."

This sets them both off into laughter. They've been here before. They've gone over the pastimes of lions, whether cormorants wear spatterdashes, and the fickle diets of all the odd, beastly portmanteaus. It's become a narrative of neverweres--

           _Lions fancy_  
                     _crossword puzzles_  
                               _and drinking_  
                                         _out of fountains,_  
                               _while cormorants only_  
                     _care a whit_  
           _for the latest fashion._

It's a laugh, a harmless spot of bother. But Hatter knows well enough: in Wonderland, there are only people. Nice ones, not-so-nice ones, and ones who come out somewhere in between.

*

Time is old. And Hatter isn't young.

Even in Wonderland, where people simply _were_ , and were for ages at that, Hatter had long stopped bothering to count birthdays, but rather kept an eye on the hours he spent bartering, or supping, or prying mud from his boot heels. These were the places his life really lingered.

But he wasn't sure how living in Alice's world would alter him -- and surely he couldn't continue without payment, not after everything he'd been granted.

There was of course the first gray at his temple -- he spotted it not long after his arrival. A scout, most likely, surveying the area before calling in the ruddy cavalry. Hatter peered close into his wall mirror; stood on tiptoe to take in the angle of it; and with a quick pinch, plucked it free. He stared down.

It was quite brown.

And Alice, who had been halfway watching him from the kitchen, deadpanned, "They call that trichotillomania. Any other predilections I should know about, Hatter?"

Hatter flicked the thing away. "Just a trick of the light."

He still catches them, occasionally. Not always in the same spots, and more often than not ignored for the sake of staring down a lengthening crowsfoot at his eye. But he also doesn't look in mirrors as often as he used to. After all, he knows himself pretty well.

*

Alice is actually an excellent dancer. Hatter catches her sometimes, peeks round the doorframe to find her moving as a song he doesn't know pipes from the radio; she' all limber limb, airy in a way that suggests she hasn't any joints or bones, but is comprised of fluid energy alone. She needn't even look about to avoid colliding with armchair or ottoman in Hatter's too-small sitting room.

She needn't look up to know he's there.

She pulls him forward, takes both of his hands in hers, and laughing, begins to guide him to the beat. Hatter is awkward. He's unused to dancing in any capacity outside of quadrille, and was a bit unclever even at that. It's so easy to fall out of rhythm. But Alice is patient. "There aren't any steps," she says. "Just follow my lead."

Hatter leans in, relaxing into Alice's body. "It gets easier, does it?"

"You'll have to work at it, but yeah. It gets easier."

*

Not a week goes by that someone doesn't stop Hatter in the street, a hand held up (close, but never touching him), to stare unassuredly, perhaps almost remembering, or just aching to claw at the too-smooth skin of a long-healed scar.

They see him, the Oysters, the Onetimes, the Maynots. They're young, and they're old. And they know, somewhere, that it was Hatter's kind who drained them.

Hatter imagines their hearts: dried dates sunk in wine.


End file.
